


Bacon Sandwiches in the Rain, v. 02.

by rixie_rhee



Series: In the Mood [16]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Love, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 04:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11176713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rixie_rhee/pseuds/rixie_rhee
Summary: He’d been about to ask what theydidcall her when she reached past him for something on the countertop. Her arm touched his hand, the soft white skin on the underside of her forearm slid against the back of his hand, and he saw the line on her bare ring finger where a wedding band used to live. She murmured a little ‘excuse me’ and shifted on her feet, trying to create a little space between herself and the person behind her. It was crowded and they were standing closer together than you usually would with a stranger. The girl moved closer to him and Nix spilled whiskey on her shoe.





	Bacon Sandwiches in the Rain, v. 02.

One night, it’s Nix and not Rissa who wakes up in the dark, although, honestly, neither one of them does that all that often anymore. He sits up, rests against his pillows and stretches in the big bed he shares with his wife. A year ago, he would have padded downstairs in bare feet, ice cubes would have clinked into a tumbler, and he would have been listening to that familiar muted liquid gurgle before taking great warm swallows. Now he sits in the bed and wants it, but instead he stays where he is.

The sky is just beginning to purple, already there’s a lone bird trilling in one of the trees. The air is soft, the way it should be in late spring. It’s May already, May 1951. Nix is thirty-two years old, he’ll be thirty-three in the fall. The girl beside him is a bit younger, but not by much. Although she does look very young at the moment. The pre-dawn light is kind and sleep erases any lines or tension from her face. To be honest, he thinks she’s beautiful in every and any light he’s ever seen her in.

Nix touches her, just her face at first, the way she touches him when she runs the pads of her fingers over his features like she’s trying to memorize them by feel alone. He traces her collarbone--he’d pooled his whiskey in the hollow there once and sucked it right from her skin. Then her breasts, following the curve lightly with his fingers. Rissy sighs in her sleep, moving toward him and onto her back and then she murmurs something that sounds like his name.

Nix is keyed up, he wants to make love with her, but she can’t right now, not even if she was awake. He gets up and walks to the bathroom in the dark. Nix takes care of himself, cleans up his mess, and comes back to bed.

He still can’t sleep, so he watches her instead, the rise and fall of her chest, and the quivering movement of her belly. Frankly, it fascinates him that they created life three times from rolling around together. Well four, actually, but it hurts to think of that little lost soul. He would have been a boy and Rissy named him Joshua. She’d explained why in a halting voice with haunted eyes and Nix’s heart broke for her. Almost no one knows about their lost lamb. Rissy wanted it that way. There was so little to remember him by she said, she wanted to keep it for herself. Nix doesn’t think anyone else even knew she was pregnant, not even Lise or Hazel, only him and the doctors and nurses.

The baby had been tiny, Rissy could have held him in one hand, and her hands were capable but small. It’d happened last summer, and Nix had made the arrangements for Richie and Emma to stay with their Aunt Hazel, and then with Dick, whom they call Uncle. That gave Rissy three weeks to heal, physically anyway. Making those phone calls was hard. He was already a wreck and he had to explain what happened without actually saying what had happened. He was successful in that with Hazel, but not with Dick.

He choked out the sad small story and then he cried on the phone and he didn’t bother to hide it, either. Dick listened, his voice was calm and heavy with sorrow when he offered his house to Nix’s kids for a week. Nix never told Rissy that he shared that secret, in fact, he considers that omission the only serious lie he ever told her. Maybe she would have understood--it’s Rissy, of course she would have--but he didn’t mention it then and it’s too late to do so now. Dick, to his credit, never let on that he knew anything was wrong. He somehow managed to be concerned and ask the right questions and do the right things without making her wonder if he knew she wasn’t just sick. Or maybe she did know and she didn’t care.

No, they didn’t talk about him, but he wasn’t forgotten, either. No one ever questioned why there was always cake on July 14th or why Nix bought his wife white roses on that day every year for the rest of his life. Maybe no one even noticed. They were both that way after all, she made cake for no reason other than that everyone likes cake and Nix brings Rissy flowers just because he loves her. Although, they are usually sweet old-fashioned garden flowers and not hot-house roses. It was always the same a few days before Christmas, too. Only it wasn’t cake and flowers, they’d go out together on December 21st, which is always one of the shortest days of the year. A day when the dark lasts far longer than the light. It was always a late dinner and always somewhere understated and quiet. afterwards they'd go for a walk in the snow, hand-in-hand and not talking. Nix would buy her hot chocolate and then they'd go home, but only after midnight.

For all that, it wasn’t ever morbid. The occasions were the only way she had to love her baby who wouldn’t ever have the chance to grow up or do anything other than be born. His eyes never even opened. Nix came upon the beginnings of Joshua’s layette once. The soft blankets and booties that Rissy'd knitted herself were carefully laid away and wrapped in tissue paper. He wrapped them back up and slid the pathetically small bundle back where he found it in the back of the closet. She lit candles for the baby if she went to church in July orDecember, and she’d sing ‘happy birthday’ slowly and quietly just before Christmas, but only when she thought Nix was asleep. She never forgot.

There are a million goddamn reason Nix loves Rissy, that she loves so deeply is just one of them. She’s the kind of mother who will play on the floor, who will get her hair wet in the pool. She chases fireflies with them in the summer while he watches from the back porch. She’ll read fairy tales and picture books to their children and then switch to poetry--not kid’s stuff, either. Richie and Emma thought Puck’s soliloquy was a bed-time poem for a long time.

Once he came home to find them in the garage. All three of them, Rissy included, had red lips and tongues from cherry popsicles and black splotches on their faces and arms. Rissy had painted most of the back wall with matte black paint, making a chalkboard. She was dressed in an old undershirt that belonged to Nix and a pair of very soft and well-worn blue jeans, and there was paint on her toes, too. She had Emma and Richie wash their faces and hands with the garden hose, and they squealed and wheeled around her when she suddenly turned the hose on them. Nix laughed and kissed her, then he took the hose from her and drenched her with it. She responded in kind and his poor suit was never the same. The funny thing was that the little ones didn’t even think it was odd to see their parents play. Nix doesn’t even want to think about what would had happened if it had been his father. But Lew is not his father, and it was almost past dusk when they stopped squirting each other with frigid water.

They filed in the back door shivering and covered in gooseflesh. All four of them undressed in the laundry room and wrapped themselves in towels over their underwear. Rissy threw the sodden pile of clothes into the wash and decided to let the dry cleaner’s figure out what to do with Lew’s suit.

He watched Rissy bathe the kids that night, watched her kneel by the tub and wash their hair and their perfect little bodies. He sat on the toilet lid and dried them carefully, far more gently than he would ever dry himself. When the little ones were asleep in clean pajamas, Rissy went to take her own shower. Nix went right on in with her, and there they stayed until the hot water ran out and their fingers and toes were pruned.

They all used the chalkboard the whole time they lived in that house. Notes, reminders, pictures, little messages; everything was left there. On one occasion, Lew brought a co-worker home unexpectedly. It was almost dark when the car crunched up the gravel driveway. The headlights illuminated a scrawled heart with the words ‘waiting for you, come find me’ inside. Lew made a lot of noise coming through the door, made it obvious that there was someone with him. Rissy came down the stairs appearing hastily dressed with very pink cheeks and the smile she gave him was embarrassed but there was humor there, too. She did have a very hard time meeting the co-worker’s eyes, though.

It was almost funny to see her be shy with people she didn’t know well because she’d never really been shy or hesitant around him. Once she opened up, she was so warm and generous and adorably puckish that it was hard to remember she could be any other way. There was an inexplicable and immediate flare of recognition between them. Nix had seen that she could be both wayward and quixotic the same way she saw both the need and the capacity for love under the sarcastic veneer. He doesn’t think it was fate or destiny that brought her into his life, just a delicious and wonderful coincidence.

One drippy afternoon, Nix had wandered into a café alone. He’d been frustrated and pissed off about something or other, he doesn’t remember what anymore. He had a drink and then another standing at the counter and his mood was only getting blacker. Then he heard her. There was a young woman behind him with a light sweet voice that struck him as pretty. Because her voice was pleasing, he wanted to see if her face was, too.

The girl--she was the kind of woman who’d always be a girl--was short but not slight, curved nicely even in her plain dress. Her hair was dark and messy, little tendrils escaping from her hairpins and she was fair but not pale. He turned around and she looked up, and that was the beginning of everything that followed. Her eyes were melted chocolate, rich, sweet, and nourishing, and he could literally see her pupils widen when she looked at him. There was something dreamy and gentle there, but there was also an edge that showed in her puckered little smile.

He wanted to kiss her right there, before they ever said a word to each other. He doesn’t pretend that he knew right then that he would love her to the end of the earth and back, she was just a pretty girl with a pretty mouth. Nix liked pretty girls and this one appealed to him, so he decided to introduce himself.

“Hi. I’m Nix. Or Lew.” He gave her his own smirk. He had an idea she’d prefer that to smooth charm.

“I’m Clarissa, but no one calls me that.”

He’d been about to ask what they _did_ call her when she reached past him for something on the countertop. Her arm touched his hand, the soft white skin on the underside of her forearm slid against the back of his hand, and he saw the line on her bare ring finger where a wedding band used to live. She murmured a little ‘excuse me’ and shifted on her feet, trying to create a little space between herself and the person behind her. It was crowded and they were standing closer together than you usually would with a stranger. The girl moved closer to him and Nix spilled whiskey on her shoe.

It was just barely a sensible shoe. He remembers that it was black with a strap around the ankle and that it had a heel. He only remembers this because the black strap against her white ankle made a decidedly dirty thought flash through his mind and that it had a heel because she ended up being even shorter than he thought at first. She turned her foot this way and that and they both looked at it. She was surveying for damage, he was surveying her leg. Nix waited for her to be angry-- _Kathy_ would have been livid--but that never happened. Instead Clarissa-who-no-one-calls-Clarissa looked up at him and laughed. It sounded almost rusty, like she hadn’t really laughed in a long time.

“That’ll teach me,” she said.

He had a fleeting thought--he is a man after all--that there were any number of things he’d like to teach her, none of them appropriate in public. He only said, “Sorry about your shoe.”

“I’m sorry about your wasted drink.” She bit her lip, trying not to smile.

“Me, too.” He wasn’t pissed off anymore, he was having fun. He made his face exaggeratedly dejected. “Why’d you have to go and do that?”

“ _You_ spilled on _me._ What’re you drinking that you’re so sad it spilled?” She plucked the nearly empty glass from his hand and took the tiniest sip. Very ladylike in a funny way until she licked her lip. “Oh, it’s good.” She sipped from his glass again, very close to where his own mouth had been.

“You just drank the rest.” That was patently a lie. There was still a good half-inch or so in the glass. “You should make it up to me.” The glance she gave him was withering, but it was softened by the tilt of her head and another quirk of her lips.

+She bent to inspect her shoe again and Nix caught a glimpse of a ring on a fine gold chain around her neck. There was a man’s band there, too. He felt bad for her suddenly. She reminded him of a bunny--no, not like _that_. Cute, soft-featured, small and soft, prey with large dark eyes. Well, a little like _that_. And for all that soft, sweet, dreaminess, he could sense the sarcasm and dark humor hiding just below the surface, just enough sauciness to keep her from being too saccharine. He liked her very much.

“I mean, you could eat with me,” he added. “I’ll buy your supper to make up for the shoe.”

She considered him. “Alright. I’ll eat with you.” She laid two fingers on his wrist, on the bone just below where his cuff ended. “I’m Rissa. Rissa Mitchell.”

Nix paid for her supper and for her ginger ale and for his own food and drink. He led her to small, high table and he wanted to put his hand on the small of her back but he didn’t quite dare. Rissa set her plate down and climbed onto the stool without any help from him.

“What are you eating?” It was an innocuous place to start, but better than the weather.

“A bacon sandwich.” She took a big unladylike bite, swallowed and rubbed her belly. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, ignoring her napkin. “So good.” And she smiled at him, again just quirk of her lips, and yet, there was something gently teasing in her tone.

It wasn’t quite then, but it wasn’t really too much later either, when Nix knew this girl was going to be important to him, that he might possibly fall completely, ridiculously in love with her. In fact, it was sometime that same night. She snuck tiny sips of his whiskey and every time she looked like she was daring him to say something. She had a laugh that was sweet and once the rust went out of it. She laughed so hard that she snorted once during their meal. When they were through, her heel got caught in the rung of her stool and he had to catch her before she fell. She was only in his arms for a few seconds, but he still didn’t want to let her go.

Nix led Rissa to the door, and this time he _did_ put his hand on her back, albeit briefly. His hand hovered there for the most part, almost touching her but not quite, but when his hand rested on the back of her waist for a few seconds, she smiled up at him. It was no small quirk this time, her nose wrinkled at him and her dimples came out to play; Nix’s heart skipped a beat. He told her he’d walk her back to hers, and she tucked her hand companionably in the crook of his elbow. In the late fall dusk, she’d leaned her head against his arm. It was somewhere among all that when he knew he wanted--needed?--to see more of her.

He didn’t kiss her good-night, didn’t even kiss her for months--on the mouth, anyway--although he would hold her and comfort her. He’d think of her at odd moments, bring her little things he’d thought she’d like, make sure she was as safe as she could be. He wanted to give her time. And he wasn’t entirely sure that she’d be interested in him, or that she would stay interested in him once she knew him better.

That very first night, they stood on her steps under the overhang. It was still raining and it was dark. There was no moon and no stars, only the dim porch light that turned them both overly pale with hair and eyes like ink. Even so, he thought she was beautiful. The only color he could see was her red lips. Nix hesitated--God, he wanted to kiss those crimson and slightly parted lips--and kissed her temple, she hesitated and kissed his cheek--even though she wanted nothing more than to kiss his mouth. Then she disappeared inside.

She was always affectionate, touching his arm or briefly holding his hand, always kissing his cheek hello or good-bye. Nix could be affectionate, too, warm and expansive. He sometimes wondered if the touching was more than companionable, but it was always casual. What he didn’t know and what she told him much later was how hard she tried to keep it light; Nix laughed and told her that she really shouldn’t have tried so hard, he would have been completely, totally, unreservedly receptive.

He did ask about her after they met--always gathering information, it was his job after all--and everyone he asked did tell him to leave her alone.

Thank God he didn’t listen.

The next time he saw her, her eyes lit up in recognition; he could feel the wide grin on his face. The time after that, she was crying, so he put an arm around her. It was like a dance between them, neither one quite sure what the other wanted and both a little afraid to ask. And so it continued, until one afternoon Nix found Rissa and he asked her if she wanted to come with him and get candy. He asked her a question and she answered without thinking. Her eyes went wide and she clapped a hand to her mouth and the blush that crept up her cheeks was delicious. That was when Nix finally kissed her and he wondered why in God’s name he’d waited so long.

 

* * *

 

 

Of course, he found in time that she could behave herself and be a lady with lovely manners, but he liked it better when she was undone. He also found that she could be morbid and caustic-tongued, but it wasn’t ever mean-spirited, well, not for the most part. She had a sweet and innocent face; Nix liked the contrast between what she looked like and what she was. Lord knows he was surprised when they finally did go to bed together. He knew she’d been married so it wasn’t like she was a virgin, but she looked so wholesome. What she ended up being was enthusiastic and passionate, and a very willing participant in his little games. She had ideas of her own, too, and this pleased him.

And she loved him without any reservation at all. He’d never known anything like it. Rissy saw _Lewis_ , and not _Nixon_. When he told her his whole name, including that append, she just looked at him, and then she asked why in the world his family was so wild about the name Lewis. She honestly didn’t want him to be anything other than himself, that’s what she loved him for, not for anything he could give her or anything he could do for her. She loved him tenderly and completely and fiercely--and damned if he didn’t love her the same way. Rissy was the same with their children, the same way with her friends and her family. She wasn’t perfect, but much as she once said he was perfect for her, Rissy was perfect for Nix, and in the end, that’s all that really matters.

Nix watches his wife sleep while the sun rises. His hands are on her belly and he can feel the baby stirring inside her since Rissy isn’t moving to rock it to sleep. He watches the sky lighten and he sips his water. He pushes Rissy’s hair back from her face and twines the long dark strands around his fingers. The rising sun paints them both gold through the many-paned window. They look lit from within, incandescent, loved, happy. At peace.

Rissy says Nix saved her. If he did, she saved him right back.

♥

**Author's Note:**

> I just really like this piece.  
> I'm going to miss these two.


End file.
